A lot of people here argued that the 970 is a bad choice against the 390

[dfg666]

It's been 2-3 years since both of these GPUs launched, still holding up to that claim?

 

 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5H_1ZFN2EE

 

[Droidbot]

and this proves what? the 390 pulls ahead in both and uses at most 60w more power. they both had their advantages, and at least the 390 has a full 4GB of VRAM  

 

[MorganO]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

and this proves what? the 390 pulls ahead in both and uses at most 60w more power. they both had their advantages, and at least the 390 has a full 4GB of VRAM  

 

but it has double

[stealth80]

It carried over from the 290, the 970 was the. Ether card for a while even with its supposedly weaker vram (an issue I never seen with one or even two in sli at 4K) but what won it for amd was the performance improvements with newer drivers and of course dx12. 390 is till the go to card from the 2, although right now it's a 580

[Ordinarily_Greater]

What? Should I still get this for my "Potential to Bottleneck" PC?

[mr moose]

You can't ask that question regarding cards that old.  They are all second hand now and the best card depends on price, something that changes too much to make general recommendations on.

[dfg666]

22 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

and this proves what? the 390 pulls ahead in both and uses at most 60w more power. they both had their advantages, and at least the 390 has a full 4GB of VRAM  

 

It proves that you have a confirmation bias to the 390 as the 8GB of VRAM will "help" in the future. When in fact it doesn't.

[dfg666]

12 minutes ago, mr moose said:

You can't ask that question regarding cards that old.  They are all second hand now and the best card depends on price, something that changes too much to make general recommendations on.

Yes I can and I just disproved those that favored the 390 over the 970 due to the fact that they "claim" that the 8GB of VRAM will win over the 970 in the future.

[mr moose]

Just now, dfg666 said:

Yes I can and I just disproved those that favored the 390 over the 970 due to the fact that they "claim" that the 8GB of VRAM will win over the 970 in the future.

no, you ask if after 2 years is it still holding up to the claim that "the 970 is a bad choice against...".  I am afraid a bad choice is greatly dependent on price, Therefore you cannot ask that question regardless of what you compare it to without a price.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

A few things wonky here

 

1. I don't see the 390 lacking in anything from the 2 screenshots 

 

2. I didn't remember the 970 consuming that much power... 

[19_blackie_73]

9 minutes ago, Pohernori said:

A few things wonky here

 

1. I don't see the 390 lacking in anything from the 2 screenshots 

 

2. I didn't remember the 970 consuming that much power... 

this seems part of the cpus fault - my system runs while gaming @250W max even OC'ed

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Just now, 19_blackie_73 said:

this seems part of the cpus fault - my system runs while gaming @250W max even OC'ed

 

Looks to be the case but then again the 390 card should've been much higher 

[manikyath]

the GTX970 / R9 390 thing still remains the most personal preference gpu choice i've ever dealt with.

 

seeing how hilareous my power bill is, a 970 was an easy choice to make for me, but for others there's very different things to consider.

[Morgan MLGman]

58 minutes ago, dfg666 said:

Yes I can and I just disproved those that favored the 390 over the 970 due to the fact that they "claim" that the 8GB of VRAM will win over the 970 in the future.

"Disproved" with an average of 22 games? What about Resident Evil VII for instance? Go run it with a GTX 970 and enable Shadow Cache, then enjoy a goddamn unplayable stutterfest because the VRAM is such a bottleneck there as there's only 3,5GB of full-speed memory on a 970. What's more, the 512MB part that's slower, is so slow that a Skylake HD530 Intel integrated GPU has higher memory bandwidth than that last 512MB part on a 970.

 

My point being, there are some games in which you will be forced to drop down settings on a 970 cause of the VRAM when compared to a 390. The 390 will (partly because of that) last you longer as a GPU.

 

Note: I had a GTX 970 in my gaming rig back when it launched and I still have another one in a workstation rig at home.

[Jurrunio]

To me, a 970 with 6GB or full_speed 4GB VRAM is the best. Not produced like that though....

 

In their current form, I'd say a 970 is still superior in most cases.

1. It overclocks like mad, Gaining around 10%-18% extra FPS after so.

2. Consumes similar amount of power or less when OC'ed as a 390X at stock speeds

3. Doesn't warm your room like a heater (a con unless you live somewhere cold throughout the year)

4. Supports CUDA acceleration

 

It's only in VRAM heavy things where it loses, terribly, I admit.

[r3loAded]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

You can't ask that question regarding cards that old.  They are all second hand now and the best card depends on price, something that changes too much to make general recommendations on.

That's absolutely right. FPS difference not that much, but pricewise different story.

 

Ex: Since I started building gaming PCs, my expenses are as follow:

 

GTX 970 - lowest I paid for it: £80 (a couple of days ago)

               - highest I paid for it since January this year - £125

 

R9 390 - lowest I've seen and could've buy, but didn't: £140

            - highest: N/A - never bought one

 

So now, which one would you choose?

[r3loAded]

Even more, if you have time to do some hunting on eBay and local selling websites (like I do everyday) you can find components for really good prices, although your mileage may vary as it depends on your negotiating skills. Ex. attached.

[Ordinarily_Greater]

3 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Note: I had a GTX 970 in my gaming rig back when it launched and I still have another one in a workstation rig at home.

Did you enjoy that playing like average DX11 games? I want to get GTX 970 for my Q9650 System

[Morgan MLGman]

22 minutes ago, Ordinarily_Greater said:

Did you enjoy that playing like average DX11 games? I want to get GTX 970 for my Q9650 System

Well, I used it with a 1920x1200 monitor, it wasn't as bad because the games I played weren't as VRAM-heavy, but when I tested a really VRAM-intensive game, it just miserably failed... But it was decent in games that didn't require a lot of VRAM (The Witcher 3 for instance), I got a good overclocker (got around 1500MHz core without touching voltage, only increasing the Power Limit)

At the time I bought it, R9 390 wasn't available yet and while the GTX 970 was a decent card at the time, I could feel the lack of power in it... I switched it to an R9 290X because it's a more powerful, and faster card than both: 970 and 390. There is a noticeable difference in having full-speed 4GB of VRAM with a wide memory bus and high memory bandwidth like on a 290X instead of a gimped 4GB that actually has only 3,5GB of full-speed memory...

 

Another thing is driver support. Do you remember how quickly GTX 7XX series (Kepler) was abandoned in terms of game optimizations after the 9XX series launched? Those threads on Nvidia's forums that a brand-new (at the time) GTX 960 performed better in The Witcher 3 at launch due to drivers than a GTX 780Ti (despite having newest drivers) which was A LOT more expensive not long but a year earlier? This might happen again, but to the Maxwell 900 series.

----

A summary:

 

End of driver optimizations shouldn't happen as soon on the R9 300 series, so the 390 due to better DX12 performance (which gets implemented in more and more AAA titles and this number will only continue to grow as the time passes), 8GB of full-speed VRAM on a wide, 512bit memory bus, most likely longer driver support is a better buy at the moment. w

What's important: In case R9 390 gets abandoned in terms of drivers, it has a lot more horsepower "under the hood" than a GTX 970 to brute-force at least decent performance out of a game that isn't optimized for it because the Hawaii-based GPU chip is much beefier than a cut-down GM204 chip that's inside of a GTX 970. Not to mention poor DX12 performance on the 970 and having issues with Async Compute.

 

With that being said: it's just not worth to get a 970 at this point, I'd recommend a newer card such as the 1060 6GB or RX 480/580. If those are not an option, I'd get the 390, the power draw difference is rather small (around 40W under full load) and the card should just last you longer.

 

If you want, I can benchmark a few games with the GTX 970 on a 2560x1440 monitor during the weekend to show you how the VRAM limits performance if exceeded, however average FPS will not show you the issue fully, as it won't show you the microstuttering that happens when the VRAM is full.

[Ordinarily_Greater]

2 hours ago, r3loAded said:

Even more, if you have time to do some hunting on eBay and local selling websites (like I do everyday) you can find components for really good prices, although your mileage may vary as it depends on your negotiating skills. Ex. attached.

That's easy, for you. I don't think e-bay is usable in my country but there is OLX.co.id that's also performs like e-bay but not always available of what I want (GTX 970, R9 270X, Core 2 Extreme)

[Ordinarily_Greater]

@Morgan MLGman I can PM you and also for making sure will my Q9650 bottleneck either R9 390 and GTX 970

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, Ordinarily_Greater said:

@Morgan MLGman I can PM you and also for making sure will my Q9650 bottleneck either R9 390 and GTX 970

It's less likely to bottleneck a 970 due to lower driver overhead on Nvidia GPUs, however I wouldn't make it a deciding factor to get the 970 because you will be upgrading this CPU, sooner or later because it's just old at this point Sure, feel free to PM me if you need anything, I've got experience in using both 970 and a 290X (which is very similar to a 390, it's just a fully-unlocked chip that's in the 390 with slower memory) so I know issues with one or the other :3

[Glenwing]

5 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

To me, a 970 with 6GB or full_speed 4GB VRAM is the best. Not produced like that though....

 

In their current form, I'd say a 970 is still superior in most cases.

1. It overclocks like mad, Gaining around 10%-18% extra FPS after so.

2. Consumes similar amount of power or less when OC'ed as a 390X at stock speeds

3. Doesn't warm your room like a heater (a con unless you live somewhere cold throughout the year)

4. Supports CUDA acceleration

 

It's only in VRAM heavy things where it loses, terribly, I admit.

If they use similar amounts of power then they will also produce similar amounts of heat into the room

[xAcid9]

390@1120mhz

970@1500mhz?

[-rascal-]

10 hours ago, dfg666 said:

It proves that you have a confirmation bias to the 390 as the 8GB of VRAM will "help" in the future. When in fact it doesn't.

You aren't wrong...but you aren't 100% correct either.

It depends on how the games are programmed to use GPU resources.

 

In the 'Hardware Unboxed' video that you are referring to, you can see some of the games tests benefits with more VRAM.

This is even MORE easily seen at the higher (1440p) resolutions.

There were games where the 3GB and 4GB cards sat at the very closed together, near the bottom of the chart, while the 6GB and 8GB variants were clumped at the top of the charts.

 

Far Cry Primal

1080p wasn't an issue; even the 3GB cards performed quite well. 1440p is where the separation became apparent. GTX 1060 6GB and R9-390 sitting further up.

Spoiler

 

 

Hitman

Even at 1080p you can see some separation in performance.

Spoiler

 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

At 1080p VRAM is not so much of a problem, but you see most of the 4GB and 3GB cards sit at the bottom.

When cranked up to 1440p you see the RX-480, GTX 970 (and surprisingly GTX 1060 6GB), all cap out a 35 FPS max. The 8GB RX-480, R9-390 (of course, the GTX 1070) sits at the very top.

Spoiler

 

 

8GB of VRAM was hyped to an extent; 4GB / 6GB is perfectly fine for 1080p, and even 1440p in a majority of situations -- and for less demanding games, 4K wouldn't be an issue (with reduced graphics settings).

 

My R9-Fury with 4GB of VRAM was able to handle a couple of games okay running at 4K+ (1920 x 1200 upscaled to 3840 x 2400).